@andrewrusling Working as an Agile Coach allows me to learn and grow on a daily basis. This is my chance to share some of that new found knowledge

Saturday, October 11, 2014

Waterfall Iterations softening resistance for the transition to Scrum

Switching from traditional waterfall development to Scrum is a very big mental change for many people. These people can be resistant to the change and potentially lead to a failed transition. It you have detected resistance to the transition to Scrum, before making the big change, consider an intermediate step to ease everyone into Scrum and lower the resistance to change. Consider changing to ‘Waterfall Iterations’ for a while before moving to Scrum.

When faced with transitioning from traditional waterfall development to Scrum, there are many unknowns and misunderstanding to be overcome. In some organisation this breeds significant resistance to the transition. If left unchecked this resistance to change can derail the whole transition. It is a great idea to find out what unknowns and misunderstanding exist and deal with them one by one. However that approach is not scalable and some issues will remain as the switch over looms. What I have used and seen to be successful in change resistant organisations is to stage the transition. Teams change from Waterfall to Waterfall Iterations for a couple of months, then the switch over to Scrum. Teams can be switched over a couple at a time, so that they can learn from and support each other. There is a co-ordination cost to having teams operating in different approaches; however it is generally worth it to smooth out the transition.